'Moby-Dick' marathon has 'turned into a happening'

Published to a lackluster response in 1851, "Moby-Dick" was nearly forgotten until being taken up in the 1920s by critics and authors. Its star has risen ever since.

NATALIE SHERMAN

NEW BEDFORD — Shortly after "Moby-Dick" was published in 1851, a critic dismissed the "ravings" of author Herman Melville and his characters, writing in the Southern Quarterly Review that they justified "a writ de lunatico."

One wonders what he might make of the more than 2,000 people who could descend upon the city this weekend for its 17th annual "Moby-Dick" marathon, a 25-hour celebration that is one of dozens now staged across the globe, including several that started just in the past few years: Oregon (2011), Nantucket (2011), Tallahassee (2011) and New York (2012).

"There are so many people following this thing I just can't keep it straight anymore," said Michael Lapides, the director of digital initiatives for the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which hosts the event.

Published to a lackluster response in 1851, "Moby-Dick" was nearly forgotten until being taken up in the 1920s by critics and authors, who praised the work for its American themes and Modernist gestures.

Its star has risen ever since: In 2003, a new stage adaptation was performed in New York; a Moby-Dick opera premiered in 2010; and this fall, celebrities including Tilda Swinton and British Prime Minister David Cameron recorded the book as part of the "Moby-Dick Big Read" daily podcast. There's now an entire "Power Moby-Dick" website devoted to tracking the novel's proliferation in pop culture.

(And here, a Melville-like warning: The items mentioned afford only "a glancing, bird's eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our own.")

The book's popularity is explained by its ability to speak to, well, everything, including contemporary concerns, said scholars. Environmentalists, for example, see the single-minded, unsustainable pursuit of whale oil as a prophetic metaphor for the modern-day search for energy, while information and technology theorists dig into chapters on cetology to see how Melville approached information.

"I've been to other authors' marathons but something about this book is so capacious," said MIT professor Wyn Kelley, one of the participants in Saturday's "Stump the Scholars" quiz session.

Fans said the book's non-linear narrative lends itself to the drop-in, drop-out nature of a marathon, and reading aloud lets listeners revel in Melville's language, exuberant sentences full of three-syllable words and exclamation points.

"The people who sleep on the floor of the whaling museum — to be there all night, that's something amazing," said Laurie Robertson-Lorant, of South Dartmouth, the author of "Melville: A Biography." "It's because the language is so poetic and so dramatic."

Last year, more than 2,500 people attended the New Bedford marathon, perhaps lured by the promise of completing the potentially daunting 400-plus-page novel in one swoop, said Arthur Motta, the whaling museum's director of marketing and communications.

"I think people say 'I'm going to conquer this,'" Motta said. "It's a perfect time for a mid-winter read with a couple hundred of your best friends. It has turned into a happening, that's for sure."

New Bedford's marathon kicks off today with a dinner and a free lecture.